“Don’t get her pregnant?” Jason was already at the point of no return, where his orgasm couldn’t be stopped.

He snapped his hips upward to pull out of her, and brought his slick red erection up over her soft, rounded stomach, so that it pointed at her bosom and face. Her gloved hands seized his shaft of gristle and flew up and down its length, adding a firm pressure to wrench his ejaculate out of him. The first rope had already shot over her stomach before her hands began working his spurting shaft, which hosed her stomach and breasts with thick semen rich in sperm. He imagined his sperm like tadpoles swimming in the shallow puddles he made on the white skin of her stomach, breasts, and the valley between them. Bolt after bolt shot out from his spurting shaft and splattered over her pale skin, coating her stomach and breasts with glistening white cream.

She squeezed firmly from the base of his erection all the way up to his knob, wringing the last bits of his ejaculate of his cock, forcing them to ooze out through his slit. The red dome at the end of his gnarled rod drooled a thin string of jism, linking his erection to her navel. She shook his tool, causing the white thread to swing around and snap, then fall to her stomach.

“I’m afraid I’ve ruined your gloves.” Jason’s eyes were drawn to the pearly mess on her satin gloves, where his plentiful ejaculate flowed onto them.

“They’ll wash out.” She looked at him with her pretty brown eyes. Sperm covered her stomach and breasts.

Jason got off of the bed and went to the bathroom, where he got a towel from the rack. He handed her the towel and lay down on the bed beside her. “I thought the whole point was for you to get pregnant.”

“Want to hear the long story?” She was in no hurry to wipe herself off, and held the towel at her side.

“Yes, of course.” Jason tried to meet her eyes, even though he was drawn to the sight of her bare breasts, and her small, bullet nipples, slick with his ejaculate.

“We were newlyweds when Steve got called up. We’d only been married five months, so it was hard for me when he was gone. We wrote all the time, but because of the slow pace of transatlantic mail, I got a dump of fifteen letters at once. I always read them in order. The letters were cheery, and he told me how much he loved me, recalling moments we spent together, like the time we were stuck in a blackout that lasted two days, and spent almost all of it in bed, making whoopee. But I knew what was happening in the war in Europe was terrifying—even though the newspapers here were upbeat and patriotic, eventually they were forced to tell the truth about the horror in the trenches.”

Jason cupped her slick breast and massaged it, running his fingers through his greasy deposit, and tweaking her nipple gently.

“When the armistice was signed, I was so happy! We were going to make up for the two years that were stolen from us. I was waiting at the docks when the ship arrived, and the confetti fell like snow, and streamers waved as they drifted down to the pier. I was so excited. At last!”

Jason ran his hand over her inner thigh, then felt the soft fleece on her delta. He waited patiently for her to continue her story.

“But when Steve came down the ramp, his eyes were blank, empty and distant, as though he was staring at something, a muddy field strewn with bodies on the other side of the ocean. When we got home, he wouldn’t touch me, wouldn’t respond to my touch. I need to be held, need him to tell me he loves me, tell me I’m pretty, need him to be passionate in bed, eager to make love. But…nothing.”

She picked up the towel and wiped the spunk from her body, which had gone from white to clear as it cooled. “In my mind, Steve died in the war. He died in the trenches, because the man who came back is a husk, an automaton.”

Jason brushed her hair from her face and studied it. As far as he knew, he would never see her again. “Do you want to have a baby?”

“Yes, I’d love to have a child. Steve and I wrote about it in our letters. I just don’t know what Steve wants anymore, if he even wants anything at all.” She finished wiping herself clean and dropped her towel on the floor.

“Then why did you have me stop?” Jason swept his hand over her other breast, as he studied her nude body.

“You like my bubs?” She cupped her breasts to present them to him.

“I love them,” Jason replied, and flicked his tongue over her nipple.

“If I get pregnant, I can’t come back, and I won’t see you again.” She looked at him with her brown eyes, and placed her gloved hand on his bare chest. “I want to have a baby, but I need this, a man who desires me, who wants to drive himself into me. It’s been too long, and I’m afraid that I might never feel it again.”

Jason was torn. They were paying him to impregnate these women, anonymously and discretely. Forming any kind of relationship only made a mess of things. But then, part of his… he started to think “job,” but this wasn’t just a job, because part of his purpose was to help these women emotionally, or at least be sensitive to their experiences.

He moved her gloved hand to his fat rope, which was refilling with blood and starting to stiffen.

“You’re hard again.” She stroked him up and down, then ran her thumb over his dome.

“Round two,” Jason announced, “and I won’t get you pregnant…yet.”

* * *

“It’s gotten out of hand,” Lynn looked over her shoulder and around her to see who might overhear their conversation. “Students know she’s weak, and they’re getting bold. They’re not afraid of her, and the disrespect has gone through the roof.”

Lynn was alluding to Ms. Ylarregui. Nancy, one of the English teachers, took a hat from a student, or tried to—the rules were that no hats were allowed in class. When Nancy sent the kid to the principal’s office, there were no real consequences, other than talking to the young man. Jason found that bureaucratic, administrative types, like principals, deans, and counselors, had a strong, yet mistaken, belief in the effectiveness of their talking, so they tended to substitute talk for disciplinary action.

There was a staff potluck in the faculty lounge because today was the last day before Christmas vacation. Jason brought a crockpot full of beans made according to his grandfather’s recipe.

“Things always slow down at Christmas break…” Jason added.

“The Vanderhaven’s already left last week,” Lynn interjected.

“Yeah, Crystal told me the family was going to Hawaii.” Jason snapped his fingers. “So they just up and leave, never mind that there’s a week left of school, including final tests.”

“Not to mention the Jiménez family went back to Mexico a week early.” Lynn took a bite of her casserole.

“The Jiménez’s are great kids, but I wish they wouldn’t take off early. But often, dad decides, and the family has to go along.” Jason reflected that he and Lynn were the only teachers on campus who spoke Spanish, despite the fact that the school had to be thirty to forty percent Hispanic, or more accurately, Mexican.

“They’re driving all the way down to Michoacán.” Lynn took a drink of her sparkling water. She had worked at an orphanage in El Salvador, so she knew central America well.

“That’s got to be a killer drive.” Jason shook his head. “So what are you doing for Christmas break?”

“I’m going to Oregon. My parents have a ranch near Jerome. Everybody gets together and plays musical instruments, so we have our own band.” Lynn eyed the dessert tray at the end of the table, which was full of cookies and brownies, but resisted temptation, and focused on her plate.

“So what instrument do you play?”

“The tambourine.” Lynn laughed. “I’m the least musically talented in the whole family, but I have fun. What are your plans?”

“Well, my grandfather developed a video game called The Midas Game, and I’m a beta tester.” Jason took a quick sip of his water. “The interesting thing is, as you get healthier and wealthier in real life, you earn huge bonus points in the game. So I’m getting in shape and getting rid of my debt so I can start investing.”

“Really?” Lynn studied his face, trying to see if he was serious or not. “That’s amazing. I think a game like that could really take off.”

“That’s what I told my grandfather.” Jason pointed at her with his fork, but then realized it was rude. “I think it was Steven Spielberg, or some big filmmaker who said, ‘I got into the wrong business,’ because video games make so much more money than even the most successful movies.”

Lynn had black hair, white skin, and a pretty face, as well as a great set of breasts that jutted out over the table. Jason took a bite of his salad when he became conscious of her looking at him as though she didn’t recognize him, or as if he had suddenly become another person. He was used to being invisible to women, but now it seemed as if Lynn could actually see him, that he was not just a man in the crowd in a movie scene.

“I was saying earlier, that things are quiet now with the holidays coming up,” Jason observed, “but I’m afraid they’re going to get much worse when we get back from break.”

* * *

Jason used the five dollars he earned at Dr. Steinman’s office for a…what exactly was it? …a session, which was a day’s wages. He thought that of all the jobs he’d ever had, this one had to be the best, even if he realized it was much more complicated than simply getting lonely wives pregnant. He bought beans and bread, then cooked the beans in a big pot outside the buildings of St. Michael’s, using an improvised fireplace made with stones and discarded bricks. The men at the shelter were all skilled at makeshift cooking outdoors, so they’d overseen the cooking.

Several men hauled the big pot into the dining room in the church basement, where the gas burners heated the room and the men assembled. Sister Mildred and Maureen stood at the front, ready to serve the men. Unfortunately, there was nothing to drink except water and coffee, which was running low.

Sister Mildred gave him the nod, and he remembered that he was supposed to deliver a sermon. He felt like he should be able to remember by now.

Jason straightened out his black clergy suit, feeling like a kid wearing a costume at Halloween. He remembered Orville, the knife-carrying veteran with PTSD. “Cast all your burdens on Him. It’s a scripture that means you can’t handle everything yourself. It doesn’t mean you’re weak, it means you’re human. Don’t let your pride keep you from getting help, sharing your problems, with God, with me, or somebody else. Somebody want to say grace?”

Jason didn’t want to pray, because he was conscious that he’d just had wild sex with a married woman, for money. The fact that he bought food with the money seemed like a cheap rationalization to make the wrongness of what he did seem okay. Dammit, no takers again.

“Lord, forgive sinners and make them whole, starting with me. Amen.” Jason looked up, and the men were already dashing to the dinner line.

Sister Mildred and Maureen served the men, ladling beans into bowls on plates with a roll on each. Jason felt sorry for Sister Mildred, the older, fat nun with thick, black-framed glasses, who was ignored while every man in line smiled at Maureen, complimented her appearance, said how great it was to have her back, that they missed her the other day, and so on. Jason knew what it was like to be a Sister Mildred, invisible.

Two large, broad-shouldered men appeared at the door. Jason immediately recognized them as the mayor’s RAPE thugs. The leader of the two had slick hair and smelled of Bryl Cream. “I thought we shut you down,” he growled.

“Yeah,’ his partner echoed needlessly.

“We stayed out of the kitchen, and cooked outside,” Jason explained. He found himself gauging the distance between himself and the two goons. He dipped his hand into his jacket pocket to slip on the palm sap.

“Don’t sound too gyhen, hyneg…er, clean to me.” The slick-haired man confronted Jason, as his partner peered down into the pot of beans. “We might just have to shut you down again.”

Sister Mildred wrung her hands, while Maureen edged back from the large man crowding her.

“The men have got to eat,” Jason protested. “We’re just trying to get them some food.”

The RAPE hooligan at the serving cart leered at Maureen as though his twisted smile made him a ladies’ man. “What’s a tomato like you doin’ with all these bums?”

“Excuse me,” Jason said pointedly, raising the volume of his voice and turning to speak to the thug at the serving cart. “I’m going to be respectful to you, and I’m going to insist that everyone here be respectful to you. You need to show that same respect.”

“Or what?” the goon asked, his voice dripping with contempt, making it obvious that he felt he could wipe the floor with Jason.

“You don’t tell none a us what to do; we’re with the mayor. Maybe we’re gonna have to teach you some manners.” The hulk in front of Jason, who smelled of Bryl Cream and cheap aftershave, shook a finger in Jason’s face.

Jason slapped both hands together, clapping the man’s hand between his palms. The depleted uranium weight inside Jason’s palm sap, which was denser than lead, cracked the goon’s fingers. Jason then grabbed the brute’s extended finger with his fist and bent it backward, driving the hulking man to his knees, because his finger was in danger of breaking. The thug on his knees started to reach over with his other hand to counter Jason’s finger lock, but Jason swatted the man’s beefy hand, whapping it with the depleted uranium in his palm sap. A high-pitched whine escaped the goon’s lips, and he shook his other hand as he withdrew it.

The second goon left the serving cart, having forgotten about Maureen, and went to his partner. Jason backed up, uncertain if he was going to have to take on the two of them. One hoodlum helped his partner up, and the two of them backed away to the door.

“This ain’t done! Get hep, ‘cause it ain’t over yet!” The two thugs went up the stairs, one of them cradling his injured hand.

The room had gone silent, but after the group exhaled a collective breath, the men resumed eating. Jason dropped off the palm sap in his pocket and was walking to Maureen to check on her when the extension phone in the basement rang.

“I’ve got it.” Jason walked over to the black phone rattling on a table. “Yes, Jason Whitlock, St. Michael’s Shelter.”

“This is Willie at the Eureka. McCleary came down with food poisoning, and we need you to fill in.”

“When?” Jason asked.

“Tonight.”

They wanted him to fight tonight! That was in just a few hours, but there was no way in hell Jason was ready.